Developer Reddit Q&A
Several WoW developers answered questions on Reddit tonight. A short summary can be found below, but it is well worth it to read the entire thing!

Misc

Player model updates are a high priority and will come with new animations.

Once you complete the legendary gem quest line, you will be able to purchase more gems as needed.

Activision has no effect on the game's direction.

Observer modes are still on the todo list, but require development time and technical improvements before they can be done.

Proving Grounds are still on the todo list and will hopefully make it into one of the Mists of Pandaria patches.

"More developers" is often proposed as a solution to various problems and Blizzard is actively hiring. It is hard to find people that fit within the Blizzard culture and it would be a mistake to hire too many people too quickly.

Combat racials will be improved for classes that lack them.

PvE

The plan is still for more content to be released faster than before to keep players engaged with relevant content and not bored. They are also committed to reducing the time between the last major content patch and the next expansion.

Blizzard is not satisfied with the current status of 25-player raids and are still actively seeking a solution.

Raid Finder and scenarios will hopefully one day make it down to lower level content.

Upon being asked about another raid like Ulduar: "In fact, our next raid zone after these may be right up your alley...."

Ulduar like hardmode toggles will be added as appropriate.

PvP

Blizzard would like to make queuing for random bgs better by ensuring some semblance of healer balance between Alliance/Horde.

There are a variety of improvements planed for both rated and unrated BGs.

World

There are some bugs with cross-realm zones, as well as some tweaks that need to be made.

There wasn't time to fix the damage from Deathwing in Stormwind for Mists of Pandaria.

Pandaria has the best in-game storytelling there has ever been in an expansion and there will be more Wrathgate level cinematics, some larger events, and a more interactive and involved story without as much phasing.

Paragon Switching to 10 Man Raiding for Mists of Pandaria
Today Paragon announced that they will be moving to 10 man raids for Mists of Pandaria. For the new full roster, see their site.

After Dragon Soul progression many of our players decided to quit the game, some of them were already showing lack of interest during the DS progress raids. In total 34 players took part in DS progress, 14 of which are no longer playing WoW at all. Most of them were longtime core players. On top of that some of our current players can't put in the time anymore as they used to do.

We were able to get some quality recruits to replace the ones whom had quit, but not enough. So far we had recruited 12 players. It has always been hard for us to recruit new players and we pretty much had the same core of 20+ from late Ulduar to Dragon Soul which played a big part in our success.

During the beta it became obvious that the current roster will not cut it in MoP unless we get couple of more quality recruits. So far we haven't been able to get the roster we needed and have decided it's better to continue as a 10man guild from now on than to hope for something miraculous to happen in the upcoming weeks. This also leaves time for our players to find a new guild before MoP if they so desire..

Raid Testing Schedule - September 13

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Raid testing will resume this Thursday, September 13.

Each encounter should be available at approximately the listed times below for all Beta Test Realms, regardless of suggested geographical region.

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session or cancel it entirely, due to bugs, builds, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Mists of Pandaria Experience to Level
We have definitely been tuning XP in Pandaria, and trying to hit a pace where a character with no rest, no heirlooms, and no guild is leveling comfortably.

There was a significant decrease in the XP required to level from 87-90 applied a couple of weeks ago, and there was a similar adjustment for level 86 prior to that.

Completed Kun-Lai Summit today, they lower the req. XP a few patches back so I was able to ding lvl88 by the Summit quests alone finally. It's still tight though, by doing every single quest in the zone I have dinged a few quests before Shado-Pan area (my last questhub) ends. I completed the zone with no rested XP at all and unguilded.
This is pretty much what we're aiming for. We may still need to make a small tweak here or there.

Do we know the current total XPs required for each level from 85-90? Is this posted somewhere?

Currently

86 13000000

87 15080000

88 18980000

89 22880000

90 27560000

The fact is -- most people are in guilds, or do gathering along the way, or run dungeons, or use heirlooms, or build up some rest. Some people only quest in groups (and are therefore able to kill many more enemies per hour). Some only ever play solo.

The values above may get changed a little bit in the next two weeks, but only if it can be demonstrated that they are still too high.
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Brewfest Boss Level and Brewfest Dates
Word is, Coren Direbrew has been working out with bigger kegs and he will indeed be a level 90 dungeon boss and his loot has been adjusted accordingly. Pace was something we considered, so we pushed the actual event by just over a week from when it normally happens (which you should be able to see on your in-game calendars now) to give players a bit more time to reach level 89, the minimum level required to queue for the encounter. Oh, we also added a couple more surprises but you’ll have to wait and see. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Challenge Modes Differences
Challenge modes are more than just a timed run. On a basic level, every single creature in Challenge Mode dungeons is significantly stronger than the Heroic version (typically by a larger proportion than you see going from Normal to Heroic raiding, for what that's worth), and where appropriate, additional enemies or new mechanics are added to make sure that the threat of defeat is always present. For many players, simply successfully completing a challenge run is going to be, well, a challenge. That's why we award excellent Valor gains for doing so. Aiming for Silver, let alone Gold, will be something for experienced players to do once they've mastered the content.

Players who tested the Scarlet Halls challenge mode when that one was open, to name one example, can probably attest that the Armory section of that dungeon is every bit as brutal as anything in Heroic Shattered Halls was in Burning Crusade. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Account Wide ProfessionsVanilla was a time of experimentation and 90%+ of the population playing with 1 main. Now it's a chore to level First Aid for alts hence it's difficult to see it seriously in design.
Well, if you look at it like that, why not make levelling and loot account wide too? Shouldn't new characters actually be new? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Class Quests
I personally loved Anathema’s quest line, it was one of the most fun quests I have ever completed, I suppose that's mostly because of the sense of accomplishment it yielded in the end and also because of its higher than usual difficulty level.
That being said, we will have some really nice Monk quests, but for now, although we would love to do more class quests, we are focusing a bit more on faction specific quests. We have 11 classes, that means we would have to use a ton of resources to implement those quests and we just can’t spare them at this moment.

Storyline and faction-specific quests on the other hand are getting some love; we’re focusing quite a lot on the Alliance VS Horde conflict for Mists of Pandaria, we will use plenty of other ways to help bring that conflict to another level, including for example the usage of scenarios.
We’re really excited about bringing this old and original conflict back into Warcraft again.

Pandaren Monk Pet Lore?
Yeah, of all the bizarre pets out there to collect, I have to say I think the little Pandaren is one of the least strange ones, lore-wise — I have a tiny Archangel of Justice following me around most of the time!

I'm sure each of them can be explained in some way though. Magical error, inter-dimensional rifts, alchemy accident... (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Terror from Beyond, a new Operation, is now available! Travel to the remote planet of Asation, where the Dread Masters have commandeered an ancient Gree Hypergate in order to unleash untold horrors upon the galaxy. Terror from Beyond features 5 powerful new boss encounters that can be challenged in 8- and 16- player Story or Hard Mode, offering some of the most challenging group content yet!

A new set of PvE gear is available! Dread Guard gear is now the most powerful PvE equipment in the galaxy. It can be acquired from deep within Terror from Beyond (Hard Mode).

Significant changes have been made to crowd control to address the amount of control a player can be subject to at once. See the Classes and Combat section for details.

I wasn't really interested in purchasing the Pandaren Monk before (although I did get it as a gift for someone else when it was first released), but seeing it at half price due to the new expansion, I'm going to go ahead with it. Chances are good I'll eventually own all the noncombat pets from the store, so I might as well get it while it costs less.

Dang. I missed the Q&A and I had my questions all mapped out and everything.

a) I find the Ethereals to be one of the most fascinating races in WoW. It was great to see them come into the cities to offer transmogs and the like. Any plans on the horizon to do more with them, like make them a playable race or something?

b) Mass summon was a nice perk. I don't quite understand the reasoning behind removing it. With summoning stones available, the "get out and see the world" argument doesn't really pass muster. I don't personally know anyone who thinks removing it was a great idea. We liked it. Why take it away?

c) Getting players attuned to get up to speed on progression raiding was a pain when all the raids were only available for 25 people. However, now that all raids are also 10-mannable it would be nice to experiment around with again. The experience of first getting attuned for Karazahn (a 10-man raid) was pretty nice. Not requiring it for 25s, but only for 10s could offer a separable difference between the two. Think y'all might toy around with some type of attunement process again in the near future?

the plan is still for more content to be released faster than before to keep players engaged with relevant content and not bored. They are also committed to reducing the time between the last major content patch and the next expansion.

ladies and gentlemen this has been "the plan" since the blizzcon where cataclysm was announced. The problem is that nobody actually follows the plan...

Pandaria has the best in-game storytelling there has ever been in an expansion and there will be more Wrathgate level cinematics, some larger events, and a more interactive and involved story without as much phasing.

Lol. Are they serious? best storytelling? with pandas that were made as an aprils fool joke? They REALLY lost the line. No wonder even hardcore guilds are losing players.

Hoping Blizzard is paying attention to the Paragon news. On my realm which is one of the largest population ones, the top guild on the server fell apart about 5 months ago. It was a very well-known top 10 world raiding guild that had been very strong since vanilla. Regardless of sub counts, if Blizzard is swapping hardcore subs that have played for many years for casuals that will easily come and go to other games that doesn't seem like a great strategy.

If it would be possible to go back in time, prior to every expansion you see similar things. When they moved from 40 -> 25 mans, people bemoaned the incoming mass exudes. Prior to the Lich King, same thing.

You have to remember two things:

First, top raiding guilds have finished all the content months ago, and frankly they are probably bored to tears at this point. Once MoP comes out, I'm sure you will see a certain percentage of the people who left come back. I'm one for example, and most of my guild is in the same boat, they stopped playing months ago, but are all starting to trickle back in as MoP release date approaches.

Second, this is a matter of 14 players leaving the game. 14. To replace those players, you'd need to find a dozen players with a very strict set of requirements (required to speak Finnish, already be a top raider and be willing to leave their already high level raiding guild to join a new guild). I'm not saying Blizzard should ignore it, but they can't over react to churn months after people have defeated the highest level content. Doing so would be a very bad move on their part.

They still have a ways to go, but it's undeniable that they're getting quicker at releasing content with Mists of Pandaria, at least so far.

Agreed. And after all: Art cannot be rushed.

"New Models a Priority" .. they've been saying that for years.

WRONG. They stated that they'd like to do it, but that It won't be ready for MoP release and that they'll focus on Mop for now.
Now that MoP is almost out they bumped them up to high priority. Maybe we get them in a content patch, maybe in the expansion release after MoP.

Pandaria has the best in-game storytelling there has ever been in an expansion and there will be more Wrathgate level cinematics, some larger events, and a more interactive and involved story without as much phasing.

Lol. Are they serious? best storytelling? with pandas that were made as an aprils fool joke? They REALLY lost the line. No wonder even hardcore guilds are losing players.

The only thing laugh-out-loud worthy here is your post. I can automatically tell that you have not played the beta (or if you did, didn't pay attention,) haven't read anything about the actual lore, and are attempting to lambast the game for things you haven't a single clue about.

Dang. I missed the Q&A and I had my questions all mapped out and everything.

a) I find the Ethereals to be one of the most fascinating races in WoW. It was great to see them come into the cities to offer transmogs and the like. Any plans on the horizon to do more with them, like make them a playable race or something?

b) Mass summon was a nice perk. I don't quite understand the reasoning behind removing it. With summoning stones available, the "get out and see the world" argument doesn't really pass muster. I don't personally know anyone who thinks removing it was a great idea. We liked it. Why take it away?

c) Getting players attuned to get up to speed on progression raiding was a pain when all the raids were only available for 25 people. However, now that all raids are also 10-mannable it would be nice to experiment around with again. The experience of first getting attuned for Karazahn (a 10-man raid) was pretty nice. Not requiring it for 25s, but only for 10s could offer a separable difference between the two. Think y'all might toy around with some type of attunement process again in the near future?

Maybe next time.

Hehe, I've actually asked the Ethereal question but they did not answer

its funny because then paragon will say "ooh, this is the hardest shit right here, 10 man is the hardest now" just because they do it. I mean 10 man was mostly harder in FL/DS and they always said "oh 25 man harder" but only because they themselves played it